Books in Brief

The Twilight of Common Dreams: Why America Is Wracked by Culture Wars, by Todd Gitlin (Metropolitan, 294 pp., $25)

COMPLAINTS about multicultural malaise have largely been the province of conservatives, who will derive much comfort from Todd Gitlin. The former SDS president is pointing his leftist Lugar at the politically correct squads. While he makes some unconvincing efforts to defend their deconstructionist jihad against conservative critics, Gitlin is also angry. He knows that the ethnic and gender sectarianism parading as “diversity” means that there can be no universalist Left based on the old-line pieties in which the author’s own mind remains shrink-wrapped. Here “capital” is still the enemy of the poor, and a free market leads to “gangsterism, theocracy, and authoritarian crackdowns.” The “so-called conservatives” have no interest in preserving the earth, and Angela Davis was an “activist.” For Gitlin, militant multicultural sectarianism means that, ultimately, there is no Left left, which may be prophecy or autopsy but either way good news from a leading left-wing sociologist.

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The Twilight of Common Dreams: Why America Is Wracked by Culture Wars, by Todd Gitlin (Metropolitan, 294 pp., $25)

COMPLAINTS about multicultural malaise have largely been the province of conservatives, who will derive much comfort from Todd Gitlin. The former SDS president is pointing his leftist Lugar at the politically correct squads. While he makes some unconvincing efforts to defend their deconstructionist jihad against conservative critics, Gitlin is also angry. He knows that the ethnic and gender sectarianism parading as “diversity” means that there can be no universalist Left based on the old-line pieties in which the author’s own mind remains shrink-wrapped. Here “capital” is still the enemy of the poor, and a free market leads to “gangsterism, theocracy, and authoritarian crackdowns.” The “so-called conservatives” have no interest in preserving the earth, and Angela Davis was an “activist.” For Gitlin, militant multicultural sectarianism means that, ultimately, there is no Left left, which may be prophecy or autopsy but either way good news from a leading left-wing sociologist.